Hughes celebrates 40 years at the Immigrants’ Assistance Center with citizenship ceremony
NEW BEDFORD – Helena da Silva Hughes, the Immigrants’ Assistance Center (IAC) president and CEO, said she couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate her 40th work anniversary than having a citizenship ceremony.
“Citizenship ceremonies are a great representation of the work we provide here,” she told O Jornal. “I really believe our immigrant community does not integrate until we become U.S. citizens. For me, it’s really important to provide all the support they need to become U.S. citizens and registered voters. We need to make sure that our voices are heard and by voting we are giving a powerful message to our legislators that we count.”
Twenty-five individuals hailing from 14 countries became U.S. citizens at a special naturalization ceremony held at the IAC on Feb. 27, 2024 – exactly 40 years after Hughes started working there as a secretary, while attending Newbury College at night.
“It’s a great honor to have everyone here today to celebrate her 40th anniversary, and I am glad I am a part of it,” said Superior Court Justice Raffi N. Yessayan, who presided over the naturalization ceremony, which was proposed by USCIS Boston District Director Denis C. Riordan as a way to recognize Hughes’ long-term commitment to help empower immigrants.
Looking back, Hughes said she realized early on the impact the center had on the immigrant community and how she could easily relate to its mission.
“Immigrants would come into the IAC because they needed guidance navigating their new home due to their language and cultural barriers,” she recalled. “Many times, families were facing crisis, and the IAC was their beacon of hope. As it is today.”
A native of Madeira, Portugal, Hughes moved to New Bedford in 1971, at age 10, with her mother and six siblings. They joined her father, who had immigrated here two years earlier to save enough money to petition for them.
“At the time, the largest immigrant population we served was the Portuguese-speaking community,” she said. “The feeling of being able to help the immigrant community was so important to me that I felt I had found my mission. I could relate to immigrant kids because I saw myself in them. I could relate to our families working many jobs to meet their basic needs and I could see my grandparents in our elder clients because my grandparents were illiterate in their own language.”
Transition from secretary to executive director
Since the IAC was a small organization, multitasking was crucial to the organization’s success. As a result, Hughes eventually started doing some case management and helping write grant proposals.
“I was learning a lot; I felt like I was a sponge,” she said. “I was trying to learn as much as I could about this organization.”
All the while, she continued her education, earning an associate degree in Paralegal Studies and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
During that time, she said the center was facing some serious challenges.
“Once Domingos Paiva left, we would be hiring executive directors based on their degrees. One even had a PhD,” she said. “What I quickly realized was the people coming in didn’t have the passion for the organization. They were utilizing this organization as a platform for the next thing.”
She worked under the supervision of seven different executive directors in a few years.
“Sometimes, we would be without a director for six months, and I would be doing the work,” she recalled. “Once I got my degree, I felt there was no excuse for me not to be the executive director.”
How has IAC grown under Helena Hughes’ leadership?
Hughes was first promoted to interim executive director and officially became IAC’s executive director in June of 1996.
“It was a weird time,” she recalled. “We were financially unstable. The United Way had put us on probation because the executive directors weren’t staying here very long. I realized it would be very important for me to be involved in the community and join a lot of boards. I also started looking for grants. We had a $10,000 credit line from the bank to make payroll. I decided I needed to wipe out that credit line. I put my heart and soul into all this.”
She was able to get rid of the credit line within six months.
“I started looking at foundations and finding out how to get money,” she said. “I also looked at previous grants we had received so that I could go knock on their door.”
At the time, the center had five full-time employees and operated on a $250,000 yearly budget. Today, it has 12 full-time and part-time employees and several volunteers, serves more than 12,000 heads of household annually and runs on an annual operating budget of $1 million.
Hughes has led the IAC through significant expansion in services, diversity, and financial achievements, sometimes through challenging times.
A few months after she took the IAC’s helm, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) was signed into law in September 1996, making sweeping changes to immigration laws.
“Aside from trying to get the center financially stable, the focus became how we’re going to protect our immigrant community from this severe immigration law,” she said. “Having a green card was not enough to protect immigrants from immigration policy. Our elders were afraid they were going to lose their SSI and there was this retroactive portion of the immigration law that subjected many immigrants, including legal permanent residents, to detention and deportation.”
She joined the “Fix '96” Campaign, which sought to restore a common-sense balance to the nation’s immigration policy, which was affected by the 1996 terrorism, welfare, and immigration laws. She started working very closely with former Cong. Barney Frank and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and lobbying other legislators.
“I was spending a lot of time in Boston advocating and working with legislators, talking about the impact of deportation and how we needed change,” she said.
The IAC also worked with inmates in the Bristol County Correctional Facilities and offered deportation support services to families, including deportee case management, family support and advocacy, and integration and legal services.
Hughes co-founded WISH, the Women Immigrant Support Hub, a support group which also served to educate the community and legislators about the impact of deportation on families.
“Then 9/11 happened. We took steps backwards and nothing happened,” she said about immigration reform.
As she started seeing a demographic shift in the local immigrant community, she decided it was important for the IAC to hire Spanish speakers. Today, IAC’s case managers are multicultural, speak five languages and are able to fully understand the subtleties of culturally based dreams and fears.
“We need the center to reflect our immigrant community,” she said. “Everything I’ve done has always been intentionally and looking through the lens of what are the needs of our community, and who we are and who we represent.”
About 12 years ago, while pursuing a master’s degree, she conceived the Multilingual International Guidance Outreach Service, commonly known as the AMIGOS project. Under the program, IAC’s staff members serve as linguistic bridges between New Bedford schools and students and their immigrant families. They not only provide interpretation and translation when needed, but they also connect the students with outside services. Hughes maintains the AMIGOS project not only opens up communication channels, but also contributes to improve familial engagement in the schools and leads to better scholastic outcomes.
Hughes said a strategic plan, which was first introduced in 2019, has been crucial in the center’s growth.
The breadth services offered to clients has grown exponentially, ranging from case management and workforce readiness to citizenship guidance and English Speaker of Other Languages classes.
Hughes, who was named IAC’s president and CEO in 2021, says the center’s future has never looked brighter.
“We are growing according to our strategic plan and needs of the community,” she said. “I now have a leadership team that allows me to spend more time promoting the immigrants’ agenda outside of the office without having to worry about the day-to-day operations.”
Hughes’ contributions have not gone unnoticed as her office walls are full of awards, recognition plaques and citations.
What’s next?
At age 63, Hughes said one of her main concerns now is finding a suitable successor.
“I am not going anywhere, but I also know I need to have someone to take under my wing and coach so they can be the next leader of this organization,” she said.
For more information about the Immigrants’ Assistance Center, call 508-996-8113 or visit immigrantsassistancecenter.org
Lurdes C. da Silva may be reached at ldasilva@ojornal.com. To read more stories about the Portuguese-speaking community in English and Portuguese, please visit ojornal.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: IAC's CEO Helena Hughes celebrates 40 years of empowering immigrants
